Music Execs Stressed Over Free Streaming

itwbennett writes “At the Digital Music Forum East conference, held Thursday in New York, music industry watchers gathered to puzzle anew over the continuing decline in music sales. ‘We have lost 20 million buyers in just five years,’ said Russ Crupnick, a president at the analyst firm NPD Group who spoke at the conference. Moreover, only about 14 percent of buyers account for 56 percent of revenue for the recording industry. In years past, the blame was put on digital music piracy. At this year’s conference, however, the focus was on free streaming Internet services, such as Pandora, MySpace, Spotify and even YouTube.”